‘Ninjas came to my home and killed my family,’ boy tells police after Alaska slayings

By Sarah Larimer The Washington Post

Published 12:29 pm, Thursday, December 29, 2016

A patrol officer who arrived at the crime scene in Anchorage on Christmas Eve discovered a man on the ground outside an apartment building, according to an affidavit that was posted online by the Alaska Dispatch News.

Police also found a woman who was “covered in so much blood that officers were not able to determine cause or manner of death,” the documents state.

And, the affidavit noted, they found a boy.

“The child made a statement to officers, to the effect that, ‘ninjas’ had come into his house, told him to go into his room and killed his family,” the documents read.

The 6-year-old boy’s comment was also detailed in a statement from Anchorage police, which noted that he told investigators: “Ninjas came to my home and killed my family.” The child, who police say was in the home at the time of the fatal shooting, is now in the care of family members, according to the news release.

Killed in the incident were Danielle Brooks, 32, and Christopher Brooks, 38, police said in a news release. Danielle Brooks was pronounced dead at the scene; Christopher Brooks got out of the home but collapsed outside. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.

The boy is “having nightmares about ninjas,” Debra Brooks, Christopher Brooks’s mother, told KTVA, a CBS affiliate. “It’s unfair because he’s gotta grow up without a mother and a father.”

Police on Sunday said that they had taken a man, Jaylyn Franklin, into custody in connection with the incident. Franklin was charged with murder, robbery, burglary and tampering with evidence, according to the release. A second suspect, 22-year-old Lamarkus Jayquann Mann, was located Tuesday morning. Police tracked Mann to a motel, where he surrendered and was taken in for questioning.

The affidavit posted by the Dispatch News detailed the investigation into the deaths on Peterkin Avenue. It states that dispatchers received a 911 call at about 4 p.m. Dec. 24, in which a passer-by reported someone was on the ground and had been shot.

A patrol officer who responded to the scene found a man, who was “suffering from what appeared to be several gunshot wounds to the body and one shot to the head,” the documents state. The second victim, a woman, was found in a doorway. The child who told officers about the “ninjas” was discovered in a parking lot. Authorities believe he is Danielle Brooks’s son, according to the documents.

Authorities also spoke with a witness, who said he heard shots and saw three men, dressed in black, running from the building and getting into a car.

After the initial 911 call, a local hospital also called dispatchers and said a man with a gunshot wound had been dropped off at the medical center. That man claimed he had been shot after he spotted a man being chased while walking to a relative’s house. He was “vague on the details of the events” and wasn’t able to describe who shot him, but did tell investigators he was with a friend, Franklin.

When officers interviewed Franklin, he “gave several versions of the events” that happened at the apartment, according to the documents, before he “eventually settled” on an account. He told police that he had picked up his friend, the man who would end up in the hospital, and drove to a woman’s house. That’s when he said he met two men, including one whose name he didn’t know.

Franklin told investigators that one of these men asked the pair if they wanted to make some money and laid out a robbery plan, the documents state. The group got T-shirts to cover their faces, Franklin told a detective, and one of the men told them that Christopher Brooks was expecting him.

They traveled to an alleyway near the Brooks family residence, then three men - Franklin, his friend in the hospital and the man who had explained the robbery plan - entered the apartment. Two people, including Franklin, waited with Danielle Brooks, while a third took Christopher Brooks into a bedroom.

According to the documents, Franklin told a detective that after Brooks and the third man emerged from the room, the man started making demands, and Christopher Brooks began to plead with him, and Danielle Brooks “sat on the couch and screamed ‘Oh my God, oh my God. . . .’ “

A melee broke out after Christopher Brooks tried to wrestle with one of the men, Franklin claimed. He told police that Christopher Brooks was then shot “several times,” and Danielle Brooks was shot “from a distance of about five feet,” according to the affidavit.

Franklin used social media to help authorities identify Lamarkus Mann, whom Franklin claimed was the third man in the apartment, the affidavit stated. He told police that Mann shot both Danielle and Christopher Brooks, and said Mann was “the only person to shoot.”

It was unclear whether any other suspects besides Franklin and Mann had been taken into custody by Wednesday. An Anchorage police spokesperson did not immediately return a phone message from The Post on Wednesday.